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Monday, June 2, 2014

Obama’s Illegal Prisoner Swap

If there is one constant about U.S. policy in the Middle East, it is the law of nasty unintended consequences. That’s something the Obama administration disregarded when it recently chose to ignore the law that requires the president to consult with Congress before releasing or transferring any prisoners from Guantanamo. Flouting the law, Obama swapped five hard-core terrorists for Army sergeant Bowe Bergdahl. The Taliban terrorists are now in Qatar, whose government claims it will restrict their movements to inside Qatar for one year. And then what?“These are the hardest of the hard core,” Senator John McCain, a former Vietnam POW, told CBS’s Face the Nation on Sunday. “These are the highest high-risk people, and others that we have released have gone back into the fight.”Susan Rice, Obama’s national-security adviser, appeared on the Sunday-morning talk shows in full-spin mode that was reminiscent of her Benghazi appearances. “This was an urgent and acute situation,” she insisted, citing Bergdahl’s health as a reason for evading the legal requirement. Other Obama officials claim that the law wasn’t violated because U.S. diplomats went through a third party — Qatar — in arranging the release. George Stephanopoulos of ABC News summarized the administration’s justifications as follows:

This was moving so fast, they couldn’t talk to the Congress. But they also say the president, when he signed this law, said he had the constitutional authority not to live by it, that he had the constitutional authority to go around Congress and simply do what he needed to do to get the detainees back to their home countries.

The humanitarian aspects of Bergdahl’s release aren’t in dispute. Everyone is very glad he is back home. But there is real question as to whether he is a hero or a deserter. Significantly, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel pointedly declines to say whether he believes that Bergdahl was attempting to desert the Army or go AWOL when he suddenly left his unit in Afghanistan in 2009 and disappeared. E-mails he sent prior to his capture surfaced in 2012 in Rolling Stone and indicated that he had been considering desertion.But Hagel says those facts are immaterial to the decision to engage in the controversial prisoner swap. “Our first priority is assuring his well-being and his health and getting him reunited with his family,” he told reporters. “Other circumstances that may develop and questions — those will be dealt with later.”What also will have to be dealt with later is that the Obama White House says the exchange was part of what one official calls “a broader reconciliation framework” between the U.S. and the Taliban, who harbored the terrorists of 9/11 back in 2001. But even some White House officials privately admit there is a risk of emboldening other terrorists to kidnap U.S. troops or citizens in an effort to spring other prisoners. Still, they also claim that the prisoner swap will pay foreign-policy dividends.We’ve heard such rationalizations before. In the 1980s, the deep personal anguish President Ronald Reagan felt over Americans taken hostage in Lebanon was the spark for what became the Iran-Contra scandal, which descended into a sordid, illegal arms-for-hostages deal. Reagan later admitted to a national TV audience that he had made a serious error in letting his heart override his head. Other misguided Middle East peace initiatives include the first Bush administration’s 1991 Madrid peace conference, which resulted in closer ties between Iran and Palestinian terrorists, ties that persist to this day.But the Democrats who crucified Reagan for his efforts to free the hostages — and let’s recall that the hostage crisis was considered by all as urgent and acute at the time — have been cheerleaders for Obama’s prisoner swap. Democrats in Congress seem to think that the law requiring congressional consultation for prisoner swaps, a law many of them voted for just a year ago, is a mere encumbrance, and that violating it was not only justified but admirable in the circumstances.The Obama administration’s consistently cavalier attitude toward the rule of law — whether regarding the IRS scandal, Fast and Furious, Obamacare, immigration, or the repeated refusal to answer congressional subpoenas — is profoundly disturbing.In his 1966 poem “The Incredible Bread Machine,” R. W. Grant described an entrepreneur named Tom Smith who ran afoul of a power-seeking Justice Department. When Smith appears before the judge, he asks plaintively why he has been singled out. The judge looks down on him and intones:

The rule of law, in complex times, Has proved itself deficient. We much prefer the rule of men! It’s vastly more efficient.

In its prisoner swap, the Obama administration has yet again veered away from its responsibility to uphold the former and given way to the latter.The growing evidence that the Obama administration can’t be trusted to respect the rule of law is one of the biggest obstacles it faces in securing the support and confidence not only of Congress but of the American people.— John Fund is national-affairs columnist for National Review Online.

Susan (foot-in-mouth) Rice: Bergdahl Served With 'Honor and Distinction'!

weeklystandard.com ^ | JUN 2, 2014 | DANIEL HALPER
Obama's national security adviser, Susan Rice, said on ABC that Bowe Bergdahl "served the United States with honor and distinction." Certainly anybody who's been held in those conditions, in captivity for five years, has paid an extraordinary price. But that is really not the point. The point is that he's back,” Rice told ABC host George Stephanopoulos when asked whether Bergdahl was a deserter and whether he'd face punishment. “He is going to be safely reunited with his family. He served the United States with honor and distinction. And we’ll have the opportunity eventually to learn what has transpired in the past years, but what's most important now is his health and well being, that he have the opportunity to recover in peace and security and be reunited with his family. Which is why this is such a joyous day.”

Surprise! $15 an hour minimum wage backfires!

It turns out that leftists can’t repeal the law of supply and demand. In the Seattle suburb of Seatac, adjacent to the airport and full of parking lots, hotels, and restaurants with many low wage employees, the minimum wage was hiked to $15 an hour, and the results of this social experiment are coming in. United Liberty reports: A February report from the Seattle Times revealed:At the Clarion Hotel off International Boulevard, a sit-down restaurant has been shuttered, though it might soon be replaced by a less-labor-intensive cafe…Other businesses have adjusted in ways that run the gamut from putting more work in the hands of managers, to instituting a small “living-wage surcharge” for a daily parking space near the airport.

That’s not all. According to Assunta Ng, publisher of the Northwest Asian Weekly, some employees are feeling the pinch as employers cut benefits. She recalls a conversation she had with two hotel employees who have been affected by the wage hike:

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11 Skills Your Great-Grandparents Had That You Don’t!

ancestry.com ^ | 6-2-14
Our parents and grandparents may shake their heads every time we grab our smart phones to get turn-by-turn directions or calculate the tip. But when it comes to life skills, our great-grandparents have us all beat. Here are some skills our great-grandparents had 90 years ago that most of us don’t. 1. Courting While your parents and grandparents didn’t have the option to ask someone out on a date via text message, it’s highly likely that your great-grandparents didn’t have the option of dating at all. Until well into the 1920s, modern dating didn’t really exist. A gentleman would court a young lady by asking her or her parents for permission to call on the family. The potential couple would have a formal visit — with at least one parent chaperone present — and the man would leave a calling card. If the parents and young lady were impressed, he’d be invited back again and that would be the start of their romance.